Nowadays, when people like Katie Hopkins write sentences like this we all get very upset. In 1859 it was seen as cool, and a bit edgy.

This marks the first time Norway was mentioned in an English novel, though many suspect Dickens just chucked it in to get the record because the mention of Norway is completely superfluous to the sentence.

People still argue what a “certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it” is. He probably meant a picnic basket.

‘tumbrils’ is, of course, one of the many words Dickens invented. It didn’t catch on because it sounded too silly.

A rare typo. This should, of course, say ‘for ass munch’

Occasionally I like to imagine what it would be like to understand this sentence. Quite nice, I reckon. Quite nice.

And all on the way to St Ives, I believe.

Dickens would often reference jokes that were doing the rounds of the coffee shops in his work. This mention of Turnham Green is an allusion to one of the most popular at the time:

“I was made to stand and deliver last night”
“Turnham Green?”
“No. But I did shit myself.”

This sounds a bit odd to the modern reader, but there were really were a king in England and there were a king in France too, and their jaws was similar.

Critics have argued about this one line of prose for decades. Known as the ‘Extra Words Dilemma’, the debate rages around the true meaning of this muddied sentence about clarity. In a nutshell, it would make a lot more sense if it didn’t have the bit about “preserves of loaves and fishes” in it, but recent thinking is that, in an ideal world, fifteen and a half words be removed.

This is, by some way, the rudest sentence in the English language.

Dickens does love a ghost. Unfortunately, this one won’t sing any songs of the quality of “We’re Marley and Marley, woooooooh” from Dickens’ finest musical, The Muppets Christmas Carol.

Haven’t we all.

Not everyone gets Dickens. I’m here to make sure you do.

Charles Dickens wrote probably like nine or ten books, which doesn’t sound like a lot but they are all proper massive. Even the one he didn’t finish is about eight hundred pages long. Seriously, who has got time to read that? It hasn’t even got an end?

But like Shakespeare, or JK Rowling, or Austen, Dickens is part of our culture, our heritage. Can you truly call yourself a writer if you haven’t trudged through one of his stupid novels? Some would say no.

So, here I am, to help you.

We are going to read A Tale of Two Cities. We are going to read it together. One page at a time. Two pages a week. I’ll do a few notes, and we’ll have a few discussions. It will be like a book club, but without the bit where somebody tries to make you read Mitch Albom.

It will take about four years, but when we are done you will be finally able to say, “I get Dickens now, and I love it!”